“And you see I did want you so much! Mary could not have wanted you nearly so much! Why, I gave up my ride to stay with you! I had no headache!” she announced the fact quite joyously; “I simply thought suddenly how nice it would be to spend the afternoon with you—like old days—when we were young together! I really thought Mary would prefer Mrs. Grier—really I did! And once embarked on a fib—for I did not want her to think that I cared so much to have you—I had to go on—they all came one after the other,” said Camelia, dismally now, “and even when I saw how disappointed she was I hardened my heart in its selfishness—a perfect devil, of course; yes, I see quite well that I was a devil. So there is the truth for you. Really the truth. More than one ray of sincerity, is it not? And I need not have told you, since good old Mary was such a trump. There! I have lain down under your feet—and you may scrub your boots on me if you want to!”
“Alas, Camelia!” said Perior. He sat down again. Her confession had indeed forced upon him a certain resignation. For some moments he did not speak. “I believe I am the only person in the world to whom you would humble yourself like this,” he said at last. “I am a convenient father-confessor for you. You find yourself more comfortable after dumping your load of sins on me. It’s a corner in your psychology I’ve never quite understood—another little twist of egotism my mind is too blunt to penetrate. I am not worth while deceiving—is that it?” and as her eyes rested on his in mute, but unmistakable pain, he added, the note of resignation deepened, “You do not repent, that is evident. You confess; but it is very much as if I particularly hated dirty finger-nails, and to please my fastidiousness you washed yours.”
“I might have hidden them,” Camelia murmured, glancing down at the translucent pink and white of those objets d’art.
“Yes, you might; that is your advantage. The speck of dirt worried you, knowing my taste. The matter to you is just about on that level of seriousness. You are not sorry for Mary; you are merely preening yourself for me. It is that; your heartlessness, your selfishness, your hard indifference to other people’s feelings that makes me despair of you. For I do despair of you.”
“Am I so heartless, so selfish, so hard?”
“I am afraid you are.”
“And it breaks your heart?”
Perior laughed shortly.
“Ah; you find compensation in that! I shall survive, Camelia. I have managed to survive a great many disagreeable experiences.”
“And I am one. Don’t you feel a little more kindly towards me? Are you not a little flattered by the realization that my misdeeds arose entirely from my affection for you?” Camelia smiled sadly, adding, “It’s quite true.”